CIO LaVerne Council says VA needs new EHR with analytics, cloud, patient experience capabilities
Veterans Affairs CIO LaVerne Council on Thursday testified that she has recommended a "state-of-the-art, world class" electronic health record to VA Undersecretary for Health David Shulkin, MD, and they will publicly share those intentions this summer.
VistA is "the heartbeat of the patient experience," Council said. "But it doesn’t have everything needed to support the overall veteran experience and clinical management."
The particular software leverages FHIR, has a user interface akin to Facebook and Google, and is available as a cloud service, Council said. Referring to the broader vision as a "digital health platform," Council explained that it will consist of four key elements: clinical management, hospital operations, veteran experience, and predictive analytics.
Council added that the platform VA is considering is currently being evaluated by users and is highly agile and interoperable with the DoD and private sector entities.
"This summer we will unveil what we think the VA should do,” Council said without naming a particular EHR vendor.
During the same Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health hearing, Shulkin said the decision VA is facing is whether continuing to modernize the 40-year old VistA EHR will better serve Veterans, healthcare providers and taxpayers than a commercial product.
"We are engaging industry leaders in tech and healthcare as well as domain knowledge," Shulkin said. "As Ms. Council and I have the opportunity to evaluate more options, we gain more insight, we will share this vision with you."
Shulkin added that VistA’s final planned milestone is slated for 2018.
The hearing on Thursday also addressed the VA’s choice of a scheduling system. Last year the VA awarded Epic a $624 million contract to implement its MASS product, which has since been suspended, while the VA is testing its own VSE.
Shulkin said that that wait time crisis was caused by archaic software and held up a posted with the old DOS-based interface next to VSE’s Microsoft Outlook-like UI and, what’s more, added that VSE is available today and will cost $6.4 million to rollout nationwide. Epic’s MASS, on the other hand, would cost taxpayers $150 million just to pilot and that would take months.
[Also: Epic grabs VA software contract]
“We felt the best decision was to roll out VSE, make a decision very quickly whether it meets all the needs of employees, veterans, taxpayers and, if not, we’ll proceed with MASS,” Shulkin said.
Shulkin said the contract with Epic remains open and can be tapped into at any time.
New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Anne Kuster said that the VA needs to be thinking about interoperability with the DoD and wisely spending precious taxpayer dollars because in her district some providers have stopped participating in the VA because they’re not getting paid in a timely manner – while some patients have given up on seeking care at VA facilities because they can’t book or get to appoints.
Noting that interoperability was a topic at the first hearing she attended, Kuster added: "This feels like déjà vu all over again to me."
Twitter: SullyHIT
Email the writer: tom.sullivan@himssmedia.com
